CALALANG, vs. A. D.

WILLIAMS
G.R. No. 47800
December 2, 1940

2) Whether or not there is undue delegation of

legislative
power?

HELD:
FACTS:
The National Traffic Commission, in its resolution
of 17 July 1940, resolved to recommend to the Director of
Public Works and to the Secretary of Public Works and
Communications that animal-drawn vehicles be prohibited
from passing along Rosario Street extending from Plaza
Calderon de la Barca to Dasmarias Street, from 7:30
a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and
along Rizal Avenue extending from the railroad crossing
at Antipolo Street to Echague Street, from 7 a.m. to 11
p.m., from a period of one year from the date of the
opening of the Colgante Bridge to traffic. The Chairman of
the National Traffic Commission, on 18 July 1940,
recommended to the Director of Public Works the
adoption of the measure proposed in the resolution, in
pursuance of the provisions of Commonwealth Act 548,
which authorizes said Director of Public Works, with the
approval of the Secretary of Public Works and
Communications, to promulgate rules and regulations to
regulate and control the use of and traffic on national
roads.
On 2 August 1940, the Director of Public Works,
in his first endorsement to the Secretary of Public Works
and Communications, recommended to the latter the
approval of the recommendation made by the Chairman
of the National Traffic Commission, with the modification
that the closing of Rizal Avenue to traffic to animal-drawn
vehicles be limited to the portion thereof extending from
the railroad crossing at Antipolo Street to Azcarraga
Street. On 10 August 1940, the Secretary of Public Works
and Communications, in his second endorsement
addressed to the Director of Public Works, approved the
recommendation of the latter that Rosario Street and
Rizal Avenue be closed to traffic of animal-drawn vehicles,
between the points and during the hours as indicated, for
a period of 1 year from the date of the opening of the
Colgante Bridge to traffic. The Mayor of Manila and the
Acting Chief of Police of Manila have enforced and caused
to be enforced the rules and regulations thus adopted.
Maximo Calalang, in his capacity as a private
citizen and as a taxpayer of Manila, brought before the
Supreme court the petition for a writ of prohibition
against A. D. Williams, as Chairman of the National Traffic
Commission; Vicente Fragante, as Director of Public
Works; Sergio Bayan, as Acting Secretary of Public Works
and Communications; Eulogio Rodriguez, as Mayor of the
City of Manila; and Juan Dominguez, as Acting Chief of
Police
of
Manila.
ISSUES:
1)
Whether
the
rules
and
regulations
promulgated by the Director of Public Works infringe upon
the constitutional precept regarding the promotion of
social justice to insure the well-being and economic
security of all the people?

1) The promotion of social justice is to be

achieved not through a mistaken sympathy towards any
given group. Social justice is "neither communism, nor
despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy," but the
humanization of laws and the equalization of social and
economic forces by the State so that justice in its rational
and objectively secular conception may at least be
approximated. Social justice means the promotion of the
welfare of all the people, the adoption by the Government
of measures calculated to insure economic stability of all
the competent elements of society, through the
maintenance of a proper economic and social equilibrium
in the interrelations of the members of the community,
constitutionally, through the adoption of measures legally
justifiable, or extra-constitutionally, through the exercise
of powers underlying the existence of all governments on
the time-honored principle of salus populi est suprema
lex. Social justice, therefore, must be founded on the
recognition of the necessity of interdependence among
divers and diverse units of a society and of the protection
that should be equally and evenly extended to all groups
as a combined force in our social and economic life,
consistent with the fundamental and paramount objective
of the state of promoting the health, comfort, and quiet of
all persons, and of bringing about "the greatest good to
the greatest number."
2) There is no undue delegation of legislative
power. Commonwealth Act 548 does not confer legislative
powers to the Director of Public Works. The authority
conferred upon them and under which they promulgated
the rules and regulations now complained of is not to
determine what public policy demands but merely to
carry out the legislative policy laid down by the National
Assembly in said Act, to wit, to promote safe transit
upon and avoid obstructions on, roads and streets
designated as national roads by acts of the National
Assembly or by executive orders of the President of the
Philippines and to close them temporarily to any or all
classes of traffic whenever the condition of the road or
the traffic makes such action necessary or advisable in
the public convenience and interest.
The delegated power, if at all, therefore, is not
the determination of what the law shall be, but merely
the ascertainment of the facts and circumstances upon
which the application of said law is to be predicated.
To promulgate rules and regulations on the use of
national roads and to determine when and how long a
national road should be closed to traffic, in view of the
condition of the road or the traffic thereon and the
requirements of public convenience and interest, is an
administrative function which cannot be directly
discharged
by
the
National
Assembly.
It must depend on the discretion of some other
government official to whom is confided the duty of
determining whether the proper occasion exists for
executing the law. But it cannot be said that the exercise
of such discretion is the making of the law.

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